Written in the bone
by planet p
Summary: AU; why did Thomas become a carpenter?


**Written in the bone** by planet p

**Disclaimer** I don't own _the Pretender_ or any of its characters.

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He hadn't grown up around trees; he'd grown up in an endless stretching desert, where farmers still farmed, and livestock perished, their bones nature's only architecture that was to be admired.

After school, he'd used to watch television at the elderly people's homes, with his grandfather, and that was where he saw the most of the trees of his early life; full and vibrant and alive, these trees were, not like the sparse trees of the school grounds, or outside the hotel in the middle of town.

He grew up kicking up clumps of dead weed, and collecting prickles and scratches from cactus and prickly things, from splintered wood fences, and barbed wire; bruises and bumps from the stones he pitched over on rocky outcrops, buried amongst the sand, or rocks that had been thrown at him by classmates, the times he'd fallen off his bicycle on the sand and slippery grit that was meant to pass as gravel, and bites and rashes from the few the bugs brave enough to live in the desert, but stupid enough to come into his mother's house, where they were promptly disposed of via a convenient, easy-to-use, aerosol can of insect spray.

Sometimes, the whole house smelt of that spray, and its artificial pine scent, so that he could still smell it a half a mile from his house, all the way to school – it was in his clothes, his hair, and his skin.

He supposed he'd maybe gotten into carpentry to escape all of the artificial goodies in life, to work with something which had been real and magnificent, in life, and which he would honour by making in into something magnificent (and functional) in death.

After all, the point of ending something's life artificially was to honour that life in the use you put it to after its death, at least, that was how he saw it.

Sometimes, with people, it was just to make it stop hurting, or to let them go, as with the very old, who'd left long ago, taken by Alzheimer's, but kept alive anyway when they would have gone naturally.

He'd always appreciated the beauty of nature's creations, he supposed. Maybe, if he'd been a religious person, he'd have thought of them as God's creations, but he hadn't been raised that way by his mother, or his grandfather, and his classmates had been more interested in getting out of Religious Instruction, than preaching it at anyone.

He'd always pretty much accepted people the way they were, in the same way. The way they'd been made; he never believed in plastic surgery unless it was necessary for some medical purpose. What people could do to change things was to look after their body, to live healthily, and think healthily; he'd always thought so.

That was pretty much what he'd grown up to like about plants; they weren't complicated. They lived, if you treated them well, and they didn't give you grief about it.

During his childhood, he remembered the lounge room being full of plants of all sorts, most of them, eventually, wheeled away out the backdoor and put to rest in the dry, old backyard.

His mother had never liked the desert, she'd hated it, and when Thomas was old enough, he left the desert, too.

He'd left to see forests, and trees, and to work with wood.

It wasn't until he was older that he really got to understand that the desert, alone, undisturbed by human activities, wasn't the barren, inhospitable place he's believed in to be growing up; it was just that humans sometimes farmed where there was no cause for them to farm, and built towns and cities in places that weren't suited to humans at all.

Nature had its own occupants for the desert, and it wasn't humans; it was insects and reptiles and small mammals and birds, and plants that had adapted, over time, to live in the arid zone (not cattle or wheat).

He did always miss the rock collection his mother had kept in the front yard, though. In her own way, she'd been an artist too.

But Delaware was nice, and he could never regret coming, and the ocean always made him smile (all of that water, all of that life, too small to see; hiding beneath the surface).

That was what life was like, he supposed. Most of it was hidden, but the parts you couldn't see were the really great parts; just like a person's heart.

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_There wasn't anything with Thomas under the character filter, so I decided to write something. It's pretty lame. Thanks for reading, anyway._


End file.
